Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Warpcon XX

This report will detail the weekend of Warpcon XX from my own experiences. We set off for the con on Friday evening, and our infallible navigator got lost :rolleyes: so it was late when we arrived meaning it was late snack and last minute painting for me.

Saturday morning came bright and early (unfortunately), but after a buffet breakfast for 10euro we were set to go; on to UCC. Upon arrival we found there to be a sizeable number of players (24 over all for WHFB) and some hard as hell lists. This was going to be a tough playing field. Speaking of lists, mine looked like this:

Overall I'm happy with the list, it performed well, any loss for results were mainly attributable to bad dice.

So after a long registration process, the first draws were up and I was playing against the one list I did not want to face, Nigel Kavanagh's Dark Elves.

Game 1 - Nigel Kavanagh (Dark Elves)

Nigel's list was pretty mean; typical Dragon Lord build, 2x Hydras, 3x7 Shades with GW's, 2x10 Xbows, 5x Dark Riders with Xbows, a Caddy, and Black Guard with the Banner and the Ring. He also had 5 Harpies.

He set up a kill zone down the center hoping to spearhead through while I pourred mostly to the left flank where he only had a single Hydra and some Xbows hoping for a clean break there. His set-up almost proved fatal as the Hellcannon got a direct hit on the Dragon with a partial on the Hydra in turn one however the artilerry dice rolled a miscast and made my Hellcannon eat its crew. The resulting monster reaction test left the Cannon frenzied and hating.

His ring resulted in 4 miscasts for me though none were of great consequence to be fair. So I swept the left flank and came in set up perfectly for a series of flank charges thanks to the rampaging Hellcannon stalling him in the center, however a botched magic phase left his Harpies alive allowing them to block one of my Chariots from getting in the fray, allowing one of his Hydras to hold up the endeavor and eventually triumph as a unit of Knights got eaten by the dragon (albeit this was all the dragon killed in the game).

Eventually it came down to kill the dragon or lose and so I had to target the beast. Unfortunately one turn of bad luck was all it took as the Shades managed to shoot down all three of my wizards in the same turn from full health despite their good saves (lot's of 2's :(). So after this it was game over for me, 0-20, not a great start.

This game was on table 1 and put me all the way down to table 12, from one end of the line to the other. I was paired off against Kevin Rynn and his High Elves for the table quarters scenario.

Game 2 - Kevin Rynn (High Elves)

More poncy elves. This scenario was table quarters only; if you were up 1 table quarter at the end of the game you got a MV, 2 got you an SV, and 3+ got you a massacre.

Kevin had a solid list consisting of a Star Dragon Lord, two Level 2's with some arcane items, 5x Dragon Princes with the Sorcery banner, 12-15 Phoenix Guard, 12-15 White Lions, 2 RBTs, and 2x10 Archers. However good his list though, I had 7 scoring units against his 5, so I started at an advantage.

He got first turn and immediately attempted to take down my Knights and Chariots using Lore of Metal spells. I made the tactical decision to allow any spells against the Chariots through as they couldn't grab table quarters and with the Dragon and Dragon Princes held back in reserve and the Hellcannon tearing after the White Lions, I felt both units of Knights could comfortably take on the Phoenix Guard. He continued to retreat to get more shooting turns, however my magic managed to take out a unit of archers and an RBT in the first turn and with my small Marauder fodder unit hiding in the forest to hold a quarter, things were looking good from the get-go.

Once the Dragon broke out, I manuevred my Knights out of the LOS of it and left a Chariot there for bait, which he took, meaning his Dragon was on the wrong side of the board now. This allowed my Knights to perform a double charge on the defensless Phoenix Guard, one of which was in the flank. The other Chariot joined this cobat after smashing through th second RBT. Meanwhile the Hellcannon held up e White Lions so that the Flail Horsemen could take them in the flank securely their destruction. The Phoenix Guard were easily depatched despite the ward saves and ASF, and the Knights coming from the flank overran into the archers.

After the next turns combat, which saw the archers get buchered and 2 Dragon Princes killed by the Roar, Kevin conceded realising I still had 4 scoring units and one wound more would take away his last one and his Dragon only had enough turns to take out oe of mine. So 20-0 to me, bringing m bac up the table 8 vs Orcs and Goblins for round 3, and the return to pitched battle.

Game 3 - Peter Crowley (Orcs and Goblins)

An abyssmal game as far as luck goes on my part. I think I rolled a grand total of three 6's the whiole game and that was for my Knights flee move! His list was a "win by numbers" style list, with 3 huge units of 30 Orcs, 2 Shamans, two Orc characters, 6 war machines, huge unit of Wolves, unit of Spiders, two large units of NG's, and that was it. The dice just ate me up in this game, with Peter getting a lot of 6's for Animosity. I also managed to roll two miscasts and his war machines were uncommonly accurate. At the end of the game I only had my Lord, Chariot, and 5x Knights left. He still had enough to secure him a minor, so that's 8-12.

So end of day 1 puts me in a very bad spot, 14th of 24 to be exact. How exactly was I going to pull this off???

So day 2 came along just as early as day 1 but without the breakfast :(Very few people were at the hall on time and hangovers of most of the crowd resulted in an hour late start. I used this time to go buy new dice that wouldn't screw me over and over.

Game 4 - Alan Coomey (Dark Elves)

Game 4 on table 10 was against Alan Coomey, one of the members of ukko's club. He had a solid Dark Elf list, carrying a lvl 4 and lvl 2, 2 Hydras, 2x5 Dark Riders, 12~ Black Guard with the ASF banner and the Ring, BSB, 6x Cold One Knights, 2x10 Xbows, and 2x5 Harpies. This scenario was table quarters again.

First turn was a display of extremes as Alan took it. He rolled IR on his first three spells, one of which was Spirit of the Forge that took out a unit of Knight outright, and then miscast his fourth spell giving me a free Gateway which took out 5 of the 6 Cold Ones. My first turn resulted in just about nothing happening but I managed to set up a nice right flank with my Knights and one of my Chariot was able to use a hill in the middle to move up unscathed to try and flank charge his BSB. My Lord chased around his Level 4 to keep her honest and threaten her as Alan knew that I could in fact charge and hold my own. On the left flank he had a Hydra waiting behind a building to pounce on my Chariot should it continue to move against the lvl 2's unit of XB's. I managed to use one of my level 2's in a radical manuver to lure out the Hydra so that my Chariot could charge right past it. In the same turn my Hounds and Horsemen managed to take out one unit of DR's while magic dealt with the other.

After combat with the Knights the Black Guard were chewed up nicely meaning his scoring units were gone and after some magic and the Chariot's flank charge, only the Sorceress' were left, securing me a 20-0 victory. This brought me up to table 5 for game 5.

Game 5 - Fergus Burne (Dwarfs)

This was the one army I didn't want to face for game 5; Dwarf Lord tooled up with Shieldbearers, Runesmith, Thane BSB, Master Engineer, 2x S7 BT's, Grudge Thrower, Organ Gun, 16x Quarrelers, 10x Miners, 10x Rangers, 12x Thunderers, 17x Hammerers, Gyrocopter. Just what I needed, to go down in a hail of lead. Things were on and off for the first few turns really, with some lucky shooting for him and a lucky misfire for me that saw his Grudge Thrower get taken out. Magic initially did little, and the Hellcannon got a direct hit on a Bolt Thrower in turn 1 but only got 1 wound on the machine and only ditched one crew. Luckily they failed their panic and fled the board. So push turned to shove and I was closing in. Hellcannon was coming into the flank and the Lord and BSB's Hammerer unit while the remaining Chariot was hitting the Organ Gun and both units of Hounds hitting the remaining BT with the Knights going to be able to charge the shooty units next turn. But I had no way to deal with his Lord that had 6 attacks and the thing to make his S8 against anything of T5 or greater. Of course then I was shown the light; I finally found out the reason for the weekend's misfortune; it all pooled together and after casting a Gateway on the Lord's unit which he failed to dispel I rolled S12 which saw his Lord and BSB go bye-bye and so he conceded, 20-0 for me.

Results

So the tourney ended, I figured top ten was where I would be and was what I was aiming for. But to my surprise I looked up to see my name after 2nd place! So 3 massacre wins and only a minor loss was able to bring me up along with my perfect painting score to number 2. Needless to say I was delighted and surprised, and got these nifty prizes.

That thing in the blue box is the awesome glass trophy I got (ukko got one too). The event was run pretty well and I would recommend it to anyone. And of course cheers to Nigel, Kevin, Peter, Alan, and Fergus for five great games; Warpcon XX was a weekend to remember.